Ideally I need something that has been specifically designed for easy reading on displays. Accessibility is key really.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a good webfont that looks fairly similar to Univers/Helvetica Neue?

Not too keen on using one of the default fonts (Arial, Verdana etc). My ideal solution would be to use something that's a contemporary cut of a classic humanist font. One that has been designed with ease of reading as its main priority.

Arial? Screen-optimized, Akzidenz Grotesk-based. Another font based on it is Folio, but Arial is the screen optimized one.
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AadaamOct 11 '12 at 20:36

Or if you want to go to a more humanist direction, Frutiger Next could be for you (the original Frutiger font isn't digitalized with screens in mind). In general however, Arial or Lucida Grande should do the work for you, they did for years in Windows and OS X respectively.
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AadaamOct 11 '12 at 20:42

Are you looking for a web safe font or a font to link via CSS?
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Mike G.Oct 11 '12 at 21:55

Define 'accessibility'. There's nothing particular accessible or inaccessible about a particular font beyond legibility. And even then, the typeface is less of an issue than all the other factors: color, contrast, x-height, type size, line spacing, line length, etc.
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DA01Oct 12 '12 at 15:11

4 Answers
4

But a few days ago Adobe released Source Sans Pro, it might be worth a try.

The primary need for type in Adobe’s open source applications has thus
far been for usage within user interfaces. A second environment of
perennial interest to Adobe is the realm of text typography. Thus the
immediate constraints on the design were to create a set of fonts that
would be both legible in short UI labels, as well as being comfortable
to read in longer passages of text on screen and in print.

[Update]

As Rahul said, a nice idea is to give a look at OS fonts that are designed specifically to have very good readability.

Bad eyes like characters made with pen strokes of uniform width, like Arial or the one developed by the American Printing House for the Blind, I think it is called APHont

I have seen that serif fonts are not good, but I think it has nothing to do with the serifs. To my old eyes the fine curved strokes that go between strong verticals are invisible, leaving a forest of tree trunks with no branches, illegible.

I am working on an interface with these exact concerns. We want something very clear and optimized at small sizes, yet have it be a bit different from the default and specified in our app for consistency across platforms.

Open Sans seemed a great choice, I really love the modern look, however I found a big problem (at least with open sans served by google fonts).

The kerning is different between Firefox and Chrome- specifically, Firefox renders the characters a bit farther apart. This is a problem. It is not fixable by the letter-spacing or kerning properties.